


To Serve Man

by E_K_Hannila



Series: Caurinus [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Cannibalism, Gore, Horror, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 09:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19353847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E_K_Hannila/pseuds/E_K_Hannila
Summary: Razor joins a newly-discovered pack of parrot aves, only to discover that there's a reason he wasn't told about them before.





	To Serve Man

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a week or two ago, and have intended to post it ever since then. Executive dysfunction, yay!
> 
> Also, I may or may not have made a couple beta readers lose their appetites. But hey, this is supposed to be horror.

“And who might you be?” I snapped at the teen currently at the end of my knife.

“M-My name’s Dex,” he mumbled, raising his hands. “I just came to – to talk to Tessa, but I see she’s not here, so… I guess I’ll be going now!” He turned to leave, but I caught his hoodie with the tip of the blade, pulling him back a step.

“Why did you want to talk to her?” I said, keeping one hand on the kid’s wing.

“She was gonna give us a new map,” Dex said. “You know, so we know where to hunt.”

I lowered the knife a bit, turning him around. “You’re Archangels?”

“Oh, god no,” Dex said. “I wish I was. I think Jeremy might be, but no one else. He’s fucked up enough to be one. The rest of us just help him out, and he teaches us to hunt like Archangels. We mostly go after gangs, convicts, and the like. You know. People who deserve to die.”

“And Tessa has a map for you, you said?” I asked, putting away my knife and going to Tessa’s desk.

“Well, we don’t know for sure,” Dex said, looking over my shoulder as I flipped through the few folders Tess had. “But we’re running out of prey.”

_That’s not a creepy way to say it at all,_ I thought. “Doesn’t seem to be one here,”  I said. 

“Well, damn,” Dex said. “Hey, where’d Tessa and Ace go, anyway? You here all alone?”

“Tessa went with a friend to get medical help, and Ace is off on assignment,” I said. “I’m gonna be on my own until they come back.”

“Well, why don’t you come and stay with us for a while?” Dex said. “Always nice to have someone to hunt with.”

 

I landed on the rooftop of an old hotel, following Dex down the fire escape and into a large loft space. There were a few broken chairs scattered around, with a half dozen mattresses laid out on the floor.

Dex whistled loudly, shouting, “Hey! Got someone! And he’s an Archangel!”

A crowd of teens raced up the stairs in a flurry of multicolored feathers, all gathering around me in excitement. Most of them were parrots, though there were a few raptors in the group.

One girl  with incredibly intense red and blue wings jumped and hugged me, hanging onto my neck. “I’ve never met an Archangel before!” she said. “Are they all as tall as you?” 

“I mean, Tess ain’t,” said a boy with a red leather jacket. “She’s shorter than me.” He shook my hand. “Name’s Jeremy. Yours?” 

“Razor,” I replied. “Dex said you might be an Archangel. Is that true?”

Jeremy only grinned and shrugged. “How the fuck am I supposed to know? I never read my file.”

Over a hectic ten minutes, I was introduced to the entire pack: the girl who had hugged me was  Rose (she was quite proud of being a rosella hybrid), and the rest were Talia, Matthew,  Margot, and Anthony. 

T hey were all incredibly loud.  Nothing less than I expected from a pack of parrots. 

 

“So, when we heading out?” I asked. “I wanna get in a good fight, burn off some energy.” 

“There’s a gang den about two miles from here,” Jeremy said. “Their pattern says they should all be there, settling down for the weekend. We can strike any time today and get a dozen of them easily.”

“This is gonna be one of our best hunts yet,” Rose said, rubbing her hands together gleefully. She looked up at me, grinning. “How do you like to hunt?”

“I’m generally more on the side of stealth,” I said, hoping I was interpreting their use of the word ‘hunt’ properly. “I like to sneak up on my target and slash their throat.”

“Oh, fuck, I love that!” Dex said.

“We’ll go around sunset,” Jeremy interjected. “That way they won’t see us. Razor, you hang back a bit – we have our own way of doing things that you probably don’t follow.” 

_Happy to avoid killing anyone._ “All right, I’ll watch you guys,” I said. 

 

The eight of us landed in an alley, and each teen drew a knife.  Rose bent back a chain-link fence covering a window, and the rest climbed through. I stayed outside for a few minutes, watching them in the darkness. 

Although every bone in my body told me to run, I went inside as soon as I heard the first scream.

The pack was making quick and gory work of the gang – two or three were already dead, with most of them incapacitated. One had a knife jammed into his shoulder, pinning him to the plywood floor, and had apparently been left there to suffer. I drove my knife into his throat, putting him out of his misery. 

_These kids are brutal,_ I thought, watching as they roamed the building. They dragged the other gang members into the main room, killing them here, and piled them up in a corner. Blood pooled below the heap, spreading out and soaking the floor from wall to wall. 

After far too long, the pack decided they were done. I’d killed a couple myself, but only mercy kills, when the others hadn’t been as efficient as they thought.

“Final count?” Jeremy called out. The parrots chattered among themselves, coming to a total of 19 killed. Rose had the most kills, with five.

“Take your pick, then,” Jeremy said. The other six ran to the pile, each dragging out a corpse. I went to get one as well, picking out one who looked rich, and started going through his pockets, taking anything that looked valuable. When I looked up from my work, I realized with horror that this was not what the rest were doing. 

Margot flipped out a pocket knife, carving out a long slice of flesh from one corpse’s forearm, peeled the skin off, and started eating the flesh. As I glanced around, trying to hide my rising nausea, I saw that everyone else was eating from their chosen body. Some, like Margot, were being tidy about it; others were simply biting huge chunks of muscle out and eating them messily.

_What the fuck have I gotten myself into?_ My mind started whirling with panicked thoughts. _Do they expect me to eat too? Can I get out of it? What if I say I don’t want to? What if I just leave? Will they stop me?_

“Ain’t you hungry, magpie?” Jeremy said, blood dripping down his chin.

“Not… not really, not anymore,” I said truthfully.

Jeremy sat back on his heels, looking at me oddly. “You’ve never eaten human before, have you?” he said. He carved off a piece of bicep about the size of a chicken nugget, handing it to me. “It’s not bad. Meat is meat, Razor. Doesn’t matter what it comes from.”

“I mean, it kinda does,” I said. “I’m not a cannibal.”

“Neither are we,” Jeremy said. “These guys ain’t aves. Now, eat.” He held out the chunk of meat. “Just try it. If you don’t like it, you can eat at home.”

_No no no no no no no no –_

“Fine.”

I took the piece, shut my eyes, and ate it. Just a little bite, that’s all. But I felt every fiber in the meat as my teeth shredded it, as I slowly choked it down.

It tasted like beef. Tough, kinda stringy, but past the texture, it tasted pretty good.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jeremy said, a bloody smile across his face. “You want some more?”

I didn’t. My psyche wanted to get as far away from this place as it possibly could. But the instinct of “meat = good” was overpowering, and in spite of the source, it was good food. So I slowly, uncertainly, nodded.

I ate well that night. And every night after, for the next two weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> I considered not posting this, but, hey, gotta share it somewhere to get feedback. 
> 
> Yes, this is canon to the story.


End file.
